Sublime

Lord Byron (1788-1824) incarne le paradoxe du poète rebelle, du paresseux révolté, du révolutionnaire décontracté. Son premier recueil de poésie publié en 1807 lorsqu’il avait 19 ans et étudiait au Trinity College à Cambridge s’appelait Heures de paresse. C’était un aristocrate, un riche oisif. Cependant,

the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done.

punch-happy fists, sad eyes – but between them was decency, between them a bond, a shared weakness that made them both strong. If you see them, hoods up, prowling the pavement at night you’ll walk quickly away, skin prickling with terror but they know love, though, and they know laughter, know each other as brother, friend, father. Equals. Gods in

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who rememb